Potpourri–Lazy Summer Edition

It’s summer and we (along with some of you) are taking a break. But here’s a list of interesting usability/HF-related things that have crossed my path:

After much complaining, Ford is bringing back physical knobs in their MyTouch in-car controls. Anne and I worked on some research (PDF) in our past lives as graduate students that directly compared touch-only interfaces to knob-based interfaces so it’s nice to see it is still a major issue; if only Ford read our 9 year old paper 🙂

Trucks driving under very low bridges is such a large problem in Australia that they are deploying a really novel and clever warning system. A waterfall that projects a sign that’s hard to miss!